This is Elon Musk in 1995 fixing his old BMW because he didn’t have money to pay for repairs; now he can afford to buy the entire BMW Group with billions left to spare

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is the richest man in the world with a net worth of over $200 billion, surpassing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who now has a net worth of $137 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. However, Musk’s path to riches was not all smooth sailing. In fact, it was far from it. The future Twitter owner overcame many obstacles, failures, and adversity to get to where he’s today.

You can read about some of Elon Musk’s failures and 10 things you probably didn’t know about Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. In 2013, Musk almost sold Tesla to Google after it hit rock bottom with bug-filled cars, stalled sales, and just two weeks of cash left. Some of his failures have been so catastrophic that just one of them could have been the end of his career. At one point, Musk was fired as PayPal’s CEO while he was on holiday with his family.

Now looking back at Musk’s life, Jon Erlichman shared this tweet about Musk in 1995 and how he “fixed his 1978 BMW with old parts from a junkyard.” Ironically, Musk’s net worth is now 4 times more than BMW’s market value.”

1995:

Elon Musk fixed his 1978 BMW with old parts from a junkyard.

2021:

Elon Musk’s net worth is 4 times more than BMW’s market value. pic.twitter.com/teaPc0a3tu

— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) October 21, 2021

Jon is not alone. Musk’s friend, Pranay Pathole at Evolved Hydrogen, also shared a photo of Musk back in 1995. In the picture, you can see Musk trying to fix the door of his car all by himself. Pranay wrote: “@elonmusk in 1995, fixing his car by himself as he couldn’t afford to pay for repairs.”

In response, Musk said he “bought the replacement glass from a junkyard for $20. They’re great places to get spare parts.”

https://twitter.com/PPathole/status/1348491554436968450

Fast forward 27 years later, Musk now owns the most successful car company in the world. Tesla is now worth more than the 9 largest automakers combined, including Volkswagen, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, GM, Ford, Honda, Fiat Chrysler, and Peugeot.

In 2020 alone, Tesla’s stock rose by 696 percent, making Tesla the most valuable car company in the world. Tesla’s market capitalization increased by more than $500 billion in 2020. Tesla is now valued at over $700 billion at the time of writing.

However, as of October 2022, the entire BMW Group has a market cap of $50.14 billion as of the time of writing. This makes the German automaker the world’s 274th most valuable company by market cap according to data from CompaniesMarketCap. This also means that Musk can afford to buy the century-old company with billions left to spare. What an irony!

Below is a video of the incredible journey of Elon Musk and the story of Tesla.